How to locate formulas in a worksheet

In one of my earlier works, I was supposed to crack an already-built spreadsheet. The workbook was basically a complex model that contained a lot of data and has almost 40 worksheets and each worksheet had lots of numbers.

Now, to understand the functioning of each of the sheets, I had to find out which cells on each sheet contained functions / formulas! But with each sheet (MS Excel 2003) having 256 columns and 65536 rows (which means 16777216 cells!!) it was really impossible for me to dig down each cell.

But MS people are very intelligent. They did not provide you only a tool to create spreadsheets, but also a tool which one can use to decipher a the tool.

To view which cells in a worksheet contains functions, one can use this tool. This tool basically toggles the worksheets view from normal to a view function view*. The function view can be activated by pressing the following key combinations: CTRL and ~

The key above the TAB key is used in the above key combination. The same combination is also used to bring back the view to normal view.

Notes: *The functions view is not a standard terminology. I have used this terminology to be explain the context.

Quick and dirty: you can also find equal sign, "=" or apostrophe's for those coming from Lotus world. For formulas linking to other sheets, find exclamation marks "!" and links to other workbooks, find parentheses "["

Thursday, September 3, 2009

In one of my earlier works, I was supposed to crack an already-built spreadsheet. The workbook was basically a complex model that contained a lot of data and has almost 40 worksheets and each worksheet had lots of numbers.

Now, to understand the functioning of each of the sheets, I had to find out which cells on each sheet contained functions / formulas! But with each sheet (MS Excel 2003) having 256 columns and 65536 rows (which means 16777216 cells!!) it was really impossible for me to dig down each cell.

But MS people are very intelligent. They did not provide you only a tool to create spreadsheets, but also a tool which one can use to decipher a the tool.

To view which cells in a worksheet contains functions, one can use this tool. This tool basically toggles the worksheets view from normal to a view function view*. The function view can be activated by pressing the following key combinations: CTRL and ~

The key above the TAB key is used in the above key combination. The same combination is also used to bring back the view to normal view.

Notes: *The functions view is not a standard terminology. I have used this terminology to be explain the context.

Quick and dirty: you can also find equal sign, "=" or apostrophe's for those coming from Lotus world. For formulas linking to other sheets, find exclamation marks "!" and links to other workbooks, find parentheses "["